Mea Culpa
by Starlit Sea
Summary: Nyotalia AU. Leonora is calm. Antonio, in his loneliness, contemplates his relationship between him and Leonora, between Spain and South Italy.


The sea is calm, warming the air with the aroma of salt.

She smells it from the balcony of her small house and breathes a lungful, filling her chest with its cathartic, acid cleanness. The breeze that carries bits of the Mediterranean and bits of freshly-made bread rummages through her tousled tresses and billows her flimsy dress and blows on the curtains of her balcony's large, opened windows.

_Aqua lateris Christi, lava me. _

When sunlight touches her, she squints her eyes closed, not in anger or irritation, but in a complete state of tranquillity and she thinks of her grandfather, of her brothers and of her people. She thinks of Spain, of Antonio who is naked and sprawled asleep upon her mattress and her lips tighten into a thin smile.

She is calm and dirtied and her blood is tainted and mixed with his, but she is tied to him and she cannot help it; she loves him and her heart is barely beating.

It is wonderful.

A head of dark brown hair, as dark and as brown as the soil she digs her fingers in to plant bulbs, bobs behind her, but she spares him no glance. Instead, she caresses the hair out of his forehead and kisses his on the tip of his nose, whispering "Buenos días" and leaves, before she sees his smile and his glowing eyes.

He sighs and sinks his face into the tangled sheets with their pillows bundled in his arms, flooding his senses with Lenonora's scent of saltwater and wine and basil. He closes his eyes, but his smile wavers and vanishes, thinking of his home in Spain, of his royalty, of South Italy. He thinks of South Italy, little Leonora, who is not so little anymore, but she's still hot-tempered and still loves the carnations he gives and is currently away from him, from his arms, from his embrace.

His fingers latch on his throat and down his chest, feeling scars from battles and marks of teeth from a night before, but no silver rosary. May _Isabel_ forgive him, he hasn't been so angry and so tired and so frustrated all at once in a lifetime.

_Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi, miserére nobis._

Leonora, the little servant-girl who yelled too much, ate too much but worked too little. If she hadn't been his property, his land, he would have deemed her a simple brat. And when she grew, she'd grew into a servant-girl who would serve him food in the morning and writhe beneath him in the night.

_Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi, dona nobis pacem._

The door downstairs creaks and then slams closed and he knows Leonora has left for the market.

He rises and lets his bareness to laze over the railing in his lover's balcony, basking in the light that darkens further his already cinnamon-dark flesh. Under his eyes, little Leonora is shadowed by the wide, straw hat she's wearing, but he knows the rhythm of her feet better than anyone.

Their eyes meet, olive green, that is not so fearfully childish anymore, staring back at a pair of emeralds, old and dull and mourning.

"Buenos días," he croaks out what he should have said before. The straw hat upon her head sets like a hay-coloured halo upon a saint, like a crown of sterling gold upon a Queen.

"I'm going to the market. Better get dress up fast if ya wanna come."

He smirks sleepily, "What if I wanna come the way I am?"

She scowls because he stands like he is an Empire again with his fists on his hips and his chin hoisted, "Unacceptable. I won't be seen shopping along with a naked maniac. Unless you enjoy rocks hurled at your face?"

"Oh, querida, I know you'd avenge for the loss of my pretty smile."

"You sound so sure of yourself, Spain. If anything, I'd gang up with the kids in bombarding you."

His smirk thins when hers enlarges and his eyes turn cold, "Go on, I'll have your breakfast ready when you come back."

The little servant-girl, the granddaughter of an Empire that crumbled into dust. She was his once, despite her protests and her mewlings, and very often lately he wonders how free she must have been before she was captured.

He is furious, but mostly tired and dirtied and he whispers a prayer to cleanse him. He wonders again, his head pounding as his fingers sear his scalp, and he wonders loudly how clean that little girl was before Austria took her, sullied her and gave her to him.

"How long has it been..." he stares at his chest, so wounded and empty he is, he cannot stem the longing to have Leonora within his embrace again. His arms wrap around his body, as if such feeble, barbaric things can reanimate Leonora's flesh and blood and soul.

Tears almost brew in his eyes, glistening and stinging and suddenly he hates the sun, growling like a rabid animal towards the sunlight's hugeness.

"_Deus meus,_" he gulps and swallows back the lump in his throat, "_ex toto corde pænitet me omnium meorum peccatorum, __eaque detestor, quia peccando, non solum pœnas a te iuste statutas promeritus sum_," he picks up the pace, making haste when he ought not to, and his praying hands quiver and his lips whimper and thrust the words with loving and spiteful spittle, "_sed præsertim quia offendi te, summum bonum, ac dignum qui super omnia diligaris. Ideo firmiter propono, adiuvante gratia tua, __de cetero me non peccaturum peccandique occasiones proximas fugiturum._"

Laughter vibrates in his throat, drumming against his suffocating hands darkly, and he giggles tearfully, because he is not an Empire nor a Kingdom, but a gipsy-looking meagre boy before His Majesty, the Roman Empire.

"_O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria,_ lo siento! Lo siento, _beata Maria_, lo siento, gloriosa Isabel!" he lowers to his bended knees, weeping and snarling the vowels and the consonants to the one and only ear that will listen, His Majesty's, the Lord.

She was gift wrapped in frills and bows, but no porcelain could tame the fire in her eyes and her blood. She was a tiny baby-animal before the teenage body of his excellent Empire, nothing he could not tame without a few words and a few lashings on her knuckles. How naive of him, Spain, who had thought he could control little Leonora, who was broken and clumsy and constantly defied his Authority.

She should have been the one to clean the soil and the blood from the emeralds of his rings, not become a jewel most precious than turquoise and rubies.

Music, he hears the music not of the Angels, but of the people. It is booming and sonorous, a noise made to purify his bleeding ears. Leonora spins in her red skirt and waves to him, calling him.

He wanted her to dance and to sing and to call him by his name or any name she liked the best. As long as he could hold her hands and keep her lips upon his heart, he would be glad.

But he wants to break those legs from dancing and make her scream _España _until her throat was scorched. As long as her eyes were dull and her heart only fluttered at the sound of him praying, he could thrive again.

He's dressed in a white shirt and ripped jeans, barefoot and not minding the gravel on his heel. She is there twirling and spinning, showing her thighs and her merry-legs.

It is a perversion, really, how wistfully he wishes to cage such a spirit, to mould her into dancing for him each night that passed. It is ever more abnormal that she is a young woman with a calloused nature and he is the embodiment of brilliance and yet he wants her, he watches her with gentle eyes that shine with malevolence.

And then she smiles, smally but she smiles more than she has smiled in centuries. It hurts him by warming the hollowness in his chest. Such a twisted feeling it is, the sensation of love that burns in his heart in her name.

Once upon a time, Spain had his God protecting him and had some subjects filling his goblet with wine. Leonora would sneer like an evil brat, like the evil brat she was, and with a snap of her fingers she would shoot his cup crashing down.

She would dance the same tarantella she is dancing now, all her usual hoarseness evaporating into thin air. But one day she danced on wet floors and she slipped within his arms and then he had realised how beautifully she had grown. The looks of a Lady, but the tongue of a pirate.

He had liked it, he had licked his lips, he had sworn he would abandon his rosary and his Faith if she so wished to. But she had grown; she had grown right beneath his nose and yet she had chosen to remain rooted there for many years to come.

She took her lands away from his grasp, but some strange, disturbing force always brought her back to him. History, he realises, they have shared too many memories for her to completely leave.

The strings, the ropes that tie them have formed firm knots that are so violent and so sharp and so evergreen, he realises they cannot escape each other.

It is wonderful.

* * *

Title: _Mea culpa_ from **_Confiteor_**

_Aqua lateris Christi, lava me _from **_Anima Christi_**

_Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi, miserére nobis _and _Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi, dona nobis pacem _from **_Agnus Dei_**

_Deus meus, __ex toto corde pænitet me omnium meorum peccatorum, __eaque detestor, quia peccando, non solum pœnas a te iuste statutas promeritus sum_, _sed præsertim quia offendi te, summum bonum, ac dignum qui super omnia diligaris. Ideo firmiter propono, adiuvante gratia tua, __de cetero me non peccaturum peccandique occasiones proximas fugiturum _from **_Act of Contrition_**

_ O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria _from _**Salve Regina**_

**A/N: According to Himaruya, Spain has good balance between light and darkness... I was curious to see him losing that balance for the split of a second ;)**


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